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Is there a way to make Surface 3 device boot from the micro-SD port?

I recently installed Ubuntu 20.04 on a micro SD card (128GB). I carried out the installation process on a Microsoft Surface 3, with the SD card inserted in the SD reader on the back of the device. I have to specify that the internal SSD of the Surface 3 is broken and not accessible by any means, this is why I installed the OS on the SD card.

The installation went well, but when I rebooted the system the UEFI menu appeared and I wasn't able to launch the OS, even with Secured Boot disabled. After some research on internet I concluded that the problem might be that the device doesn't see the microSD reader during boot, it seems it can only boot from the internal SSD or from USB. As a proof of that, when I plugged the SD in the USB port the OS booted normally.

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Mattia Silvestri
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  • This is not about Ubuntu. – Pilot6 Oct 06 '20 at 09:23
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    Does this answer your question? Surface Pro 3 - No Grub menu – Pilot6 Oct 06 '20 at 09:23
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    @Pilot6 This is certainly about installing and booting and running Ubuntu. – C.S.Cameron Oct 06 '20 at 10:01
  • How did you make your bootable USB? there are lots of reasons that one will not boot: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1190764/why-doesnt-a-bootable-usb-boot/1190765#1190765 – C.S.Cameron Oct 06 '20 at 10:16
  • @Pilot6 I also found the post you linked but unfortunately it didn't help... – Mattia Silvestri Oct 06 '20 at 11:21
  • @C.S.Cameron I just used the usb writer application available in Ubuntu by default. If you mean the microSD, I just had it plugged in during the installation together with the bootable USB and then I selected the microSD to install the system. However I read somewhere that there might be some problems booting from devices labelled "mmcblk0p1", which was the label of my SD card during installation (I'm not an expert so sorry for the terminology), is it possible that I have to make an EFI partition in a sda or sdb device while keeping the OS in the SD? – Mattia Silvestri Oct 06 '20 at 11:34
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    A quick way to check is to use this method: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1279465/is-it-possible-worthwhile-to-install-ubuntu-on-its-own-ssd-so-it-can-be-swapped/1279622#1279622 It flashes a pre-built Full install Ubuntu 20..04 image to a USB device, including SD cards. It will allow booting in BIOS and in UEFI modes. in Ubuntu it can be flashed using mkusb, Etcher or Disks. It is 1.5GB to download and expands to 15GB when flashed. The system partition can then be expanded to fill the card. – C.S.Cameron Oct 06 '20 at 11:55
  • I followed the step described in the link, I flashed the image on the SD using rufus in Windows and I indeed obtained 3 partitions comprising in total about 15GB. From the list in the link it seems I didn't have to do anything else, so I plugged the SD in its port and tried to boot, but I still obtain the UEFI menu...and this time this also happens if I plug the SD in the USB port, which wasn't the case before. I think the problem is that the surface doesn't boot from the SD port or from mmcblk0p1 devices in general...I will try to do an EFI partition on a separate USB and see what happens. – Mattia Silvestri Oct 07 '20 at 12:23

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